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A Small Town Christmas...

My colony back home is huge like a maze... with many winding roads and lots of pretty & some opulent looking houses. Its a great place to go walking and take in the sights, there are hardly any vehicles on the road and houses are gracefully adorned with flowering plants and the like. This peaceful and quaint little place transforms itself during the month of December, it literally glows with festive cheer. People put up stars that shine in the evening, Christmas trees glimmer from inside homes, the crib is set up and houses are aglow with serial lights. The whole air is abuzz with excitement and like this song goes... there's a smile on the faces of people passing by. Another ethereal aspect bout Christmas is caroling, this throws the excitement levels completely off the scale. I can't get enough of them during the Yuletide season, I play them continuously... my sister is named Carol since she was born on the 30th of November, the start of the caroling season.

Anyway getting back to my colony, the folks at home are going caroling every evening and I miss that... I really miss that. We go caroling from door to door spreading joy and goodwill, its just crazy and so much fun. A whole bunch of kids yapping away, the choir girls, and a few elders make up the caroling team and its just insanely beautiful walking around in the colony singing carols and taking in the sights of a place transformed by the magic of Christmas. Staying in a city like Madras, just drives home how beautiful a small town Christmas can really be... the city looks the same, no trace of magic in the air, only the malls are commercially (not to mention blatantly) decorated. But this caroling event I attended last week, set my pulse racing again... like it does back home. Felt like someone had sprinkled magic over the auditorium, the event was called Caroling by Candlelight (organised by Madras Musical Association) and it was as awesome as it sounds. We sang carols by candlelight... here's a video clipping.

The kids choir was simply adorable, they sang like angels...

Loved every moment of it...

My favourite carol is 'While shepherds watched their flocks by night' ... check out this all boy group Libera singing it, they'll blow you away.

Comments

It's, hands down, the most beautiful time of the year. I could actually picture the houses with those cute, glimmering stars and everything. Nagercoil really gets lit up around this time. But I have never seen Caroling around Ramanputhur--wonder why- there's such a dense cluster of christianity in there. That would have been real nice.

Mahesh, if you are anywhere in the vicinity of my place, do drop in... or give me a call, you'll have cake anytime.

Sandhya, those huge vehicels used to come right... all brightly decorated with a probably drunk santa dancing on top and a bunch of boys singing, dancing and collecting money. They used to make their way down my colony too, their music blaring away. We started caroling just a few years back, since a church is coming up in my area we go to all the parishioners homes.

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